


Nothing Has Changed Except the Run of the Rivers

by adeepeningdig



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: College Student Stiles, Derek Hale Cooks, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeepeningdig/pseuds/adeepeningdig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Asshole,” he says, but he’s smiling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Has Changed Except the Run of the Rivers

**Author's Note:**

> My Glompfest Fic for carocane who wanted:
> 
> Pairing: Stiles/Derek  
> Prompt: Rival packs/wake up married
> 
> This isn't quite rival packs, but it's as near enough as I could come. I hope you like it!
> 
> Beta-ed by Yodas-yo-yo.

Nothing has changed.  
Except the run of the rivers,  
the shape of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers.  
The little soul roams among those landscapes,  
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,  
evasive and a stranger to itself,  
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,  
whereas the body is and is and is  
and has nowhere to go..  
From the Tortures by Wislawa Szymbroska  
Tr. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

One day, the boy with the crooked chin will be Alpha here. You know this from the moment you see him standing in the clearing. You know this, and in that moment you hate him. 

Your mother was not the first Hale Alpha in Beacon Hills, nor was she the third, or even the fifth. There were seven Hale Alphas before her. She was the last. 

You do not count Peter, and you disregard your own disastrous few-month stint as Alpha. You were never meant to lead, your fangs have never been anything but weapons; they give no gifts, only death. 

What is pack? Pack is family. Family is pack. 

McCall draws people to himself with ease. He can’t see it, how people gravitate toward him, around him, but you see it. He builds the family he does not have, you killed the family you did. One day, he will be Alpha here. You were born in this town, and you hope to be buried in this town, but this place is not yours, not anymore.

 

You bump into him in a bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of all places. You are there because Sarah asked you to come to her graduation and you cannot say no to Laura’s oldest friend. Stiles is there, because-Why is Stiles there? 

Stiles is- Stiles is taller than you remember, broader in the shoulders, too. He still wears plaid, but he’s grown a fairly respectable beard, much like every other hipster in this quaint college town. You almost say nothing-he’s engrossed in conversation with a woman wearing a Michigan sweatshirt and shorts and hasn’t noticed you yet. You could put down the Szymbroska and walk away and he would never know.

You clear your throat. “Stiles,” you say. 

Both of them, Stiles and the girl, turn at the same moment, in stunning synchronicity. You wonder, for one fraction of a second, if she is his girlfriend. She seems too pretty, too wholesomely Midwestern for Stiles. But then again, you haven’t seen Stiles in over half a decade, who knows what type of women Stiles attracts these days?

Then you are looking at Stiles and he is looking at you. Stiles. Taller, broader, eyes alight, Stiles. He looks good. He looks better than you ever remember him looking, healthier, too. 

Stiles puts down the book he was holding. “Derek?” he says. 

You do not know, you have never known, why he was always coming for you, always calling for you, always pulling you back from the brink. He was Scott’s, never yours. And yet.

“Stiles,” you say again. 

He launches himself at you, and you only have a fraction of a second to adjust, to open your arms and reel him in. 

“Dude,” he says, his voice muffled by your shirt. “Dude,” he repeats, taking a step back, “what in the ever-loving hell are you doing here?”

“I’m here for graduation. What are you doing here?”

“I’m also here for graduation. Um. By which I mean- me. I am graduating. So I am here, to graduate. Also, I have been here for the past 2 years. Studying, so I can graduate.”

“Congratulations,” you say. “Your doctorate?” Stiles, a PhD. Holy fucking shit, how do these things happen? 

Stiles snorts. “Nah, man. Just a Masters in uh, Early Celtic Literature.”

“Early Celtic Literature, huh? Sounds real useful.”

You grin and he grins, in on the joke. 

“Oh yeah, it totally is.” 

“Stiles,” the girl- the girlfriend?- all but squeaks, “I am really sorry to interrupt again, but the grades-”

Not a girlfriend, then. A student, and that’s almost as mind-blowing as the idea of Stiles with a PhD. You blank out for a few seconds at the thought of it.

“-just like everyone else in the class.” Stiles is chiding her. He rolls his eyes as she slinks away. “When I first started I thought the hardest part was going to be the work. Turns out the hardest part is the fucking TAing. Youth,” he grumbles. “Please tell me I was never that bad. I was never that bad, right?” 

“I have no idea what you were like as a college student, but you were pretty damn annoying when you were in high school.” 

“Asshole,” he says, but he’s smiling. 

 

Stiles’s apartment is carved out of the top floor of one of those tall rambling houses that line the Ann Arbor landscape. It has framed prints on the walls, rugs on the floor, and a blue armchair that looks worn and comfortable. The dining room window overlooks a cherry tree in bloom, and everywhere, there is an overflow of books. 

Stiles catches you examining the titles. The three different translations of the Mabinogion are not a surprise, but the Milton Friedman is and so is the book on advanced statistical models. “They’re not all mine,” he says. “Some of them are my roommate’s. He did a semester abroad in China and decided to stay.” He shrugs. “He can stay in China forever, so long as he pays the rent. I don’t really give a fuck. The room’s yours for tonight, if you’d like.”

“I can tell you really like the guy,” you say, trailing your hand over the bookshelves, catching the scent of mountain ash from one of the decorative jars on the top shelf. 

“Haven’t killed him, yet.”

You flinch. 

“We can joke about that now, right?” Stiles says, grinning too brightly.

“Yeah,” you say. “Sure.”

“Anyways,” he says, and when you turn to him now in the harbor of his own home, you can see that he looks harried and tired and less healthy than he had in the store, as if his health is just a mask he takes on and off. “I’m really sorry to do this to you, but I have to get these grades in. So I’m going to disappear for a few hours to do that. Make yourself at home. There’s not much to eat, but uh, we can go out later, or something.” 

And then he’s gone, the door to his room closed behind him, and you are left standing in a room full of books, the scent of mountain ash and Stiles in the air. 

The kitchen and bathroom make you reconsider your short-held notion that Stiles has become a fully functioning adult. Both are varying levels of dire. You grab the keys he left on the dining room table and make your way to the grocery store you had noticed on the way over. You buy whatever produce looks freshest, the best piece of protein you can find, a bottle of bleach and some rubber gloves. By the time Stiles comes out of his room two hours later, the kitchen is almost clean enough to be used.

“Jesus, fuck!” Stiles says when he sees the kitchen. He’s shucked off the plaid shirt, and his hair is standing up at odd angles, like he’s been running his hands through it. He looks like an excitable hedgehog. “Is this just something you do? Go into other people’s kitchens and clean them without their knowledge?”

“Couldn’t cook in a kitchen like that,” you say. 

“Oh, so now you’re cooking?” 

“I told you, it’s what I do. Consider it a thank you for saving me the cost of a hotel room for a night. Are you done with your work?”

“No, I’ve got about an hour left.”

“Good. Dinner should be ready by then. Go do your work. I’ll see you in an hour.” 

Stiles gapes. “You are so weird, Hale,” he mutters, but he does as he’s told. 

“Lord,” Stiles’s eyes flutter closed as he bites into a piece of broccoli.

You are good at what you do. You know it and you like it and you take particular pleasure in this- in seeing the reaction, the stutter in time when everything is reduced to flavor. It’s a shame that you’re going to have to move on soon, because working as Gabby’s sous-chef has been great, but you think that she’s beginning to notice that your cuts heal too quickly and your burns fade abnormally fast. It is hard to hide what you are for so long. So you’re going to have to leave. 

“You really are good at this,” Stiles says. “I don’t even like broccoli.”

You roll your eyes. “So,” you say. “Ancient Celtic Literature. How’s that going for you?”

“Good. I like it. I mean obviously, I like it, but it’s really helped me put a lot of things in context, especially about Lydia, and I think studying has been good for me, learning how to focus, and all that. I briefly considered going on for my doctorate, but academia.” he grimaces. “Anyways, I think it’s time for me to go home.”

You do not ask, why Lydia is not Lydia’s responsibility, and why, after everything, Beacon Hills is still home. You like this place, this apartment, kitchen and bathroom notwithstanding. You like the cherry tree and the blue chair and the prints on the walls. It is so quiet and mundane. Why should he go back to Beacon Hills? You know what Stiles will say if you ask, so you don’t. 

After dinner you go out for drinks at a small bar that is thankfully filled with locals. You sit nursing a beer as Stiles, his feet pressed against yours under the table, tells you about the pack and the quiet in Beacon Hills. 

“They’ve turned that old bank into a real upscale market now- like one of those trendy things with crafts and homemade jams. It’s like the drought hasn’t even touched us. It’s weird, you know?”

It’s not weird, it’s Scott. He has become everything that your family was supposed to be, True Alpha, that he is. You can imagine every corner, every street, every tree that Stiles mentions. You know that things have changed, things look different, but in your head, the town still looks exactly as it did when you were a child- when Beacon Hills had a pack and it was safe and secure and prosperous. You are not a child, though, and Beacon Hills, safe and prosperous, with Farmer’s Markets on Thursdays and antiques stores along Main, is not Hale land, not anymore. 

“Yeah,” you say, “weird.”

You walk back to Stiles’s apartment, and for one moment, you stand facing each other in the hallway. The air around you is heavy. It narrows everything down to the rise and fall of Stiles’s chest, the rasp of his breath, his long fingers twitching as if to move. You are not drunk, you cannot get drunk, but maybe this is what drunk feels like. 

Stiles’s exhaustion smells like a storm, a wild, strung out thing. You do not know how you did not notice it before. He rubs at his eyes. 

“I think I need to sleep,” Stiles says, swaying a bit. “I’m sorry. I’m not- I’m not a very good host. Good night, Derek.”

The bed is comfortable, but the room is too hot, and the sheets, though recently washed, still smell of male college student, which is to say, terrible. You open the window, but it doesn’t help, it just adds to the noise. You can hear Stiles moving around in the other room. Amazingly, he is not asleep. His heart is restless, and so is yours. 

You grab your pillow, and pad your way to Stiles’s room.

He sits up when you open the door. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at the pillow in your hand. 

“Yeah.”

“Me neither. I get hyped-up like this sometimes when I’m too tired. It’s like my brain just won’t shut off. Everything’s been so-It’s a lot to process, you being here.”

You take a step back, the stupid pillow still clutched in your hand. You did not intend- you only thought that once Stiles’s room had been a haven to you, you only thought that his heart was thundering so loudly-

“Hey, no.” Stiles says, “I didn’t mean-I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. Threw me for a loop.I want-I want you here. Just to sleep, even. I think I’ll sleep better.” He lifts the covers in invitation. “Please. I want you here.” He says it like it is a revelation, and maybe it is. 

For a few minutes you busy yourselves with the intricacies of fitting your bodies on the bed. He slides one way, you the other. His elbow is in your face, your knee grazes his thigh. Finally you settle, side by side, on your backs. 

“Why’d you leave?” Stiles asks the ceiling. “I mean, I know why you left, then, in particular. Beacon Hills was a shitshow back then. But why did you leave and not come back? We always thought you would come back, and then you just didn’t. We missed you.”

You make a noise. 

“Fine, I missed you.”

“I guess it was getting hard for me, with Scott. I couldn’t go anywhere in that town without being reminded of my family and what I did to them. And it would have been fine if there was no pack, if it was just loss and I don’t know, guilt. But Scott was building your pack-all of a sudden this kid was the Alpha- the True Alpha- and I just I missed my mother. Scott didn’t need me, not really. I guess I thought it would be better to just go. So, I did. I’m sorry if you felt like I abandoned you. I didn’t mean to.” 

You do not tell him about the letter, about Scott’s resentment and anger. "I guess I should have known you would abandon us", he wrote during that terrible year when Theo almost destroyed the pack, "don’t come back". 

You were never going to take Scott’s side over Stiles’s, and you were never going to tell the True Alpha that he was wrong, so you did as you were told and you didn’t come back. 

“Derek,” Stiles says, rustling around a bit, turning to lift himself up on the crook of his elbow. “Turn your eyes on, I want to show you something.” 

He lifts up his worn t-shirt. You have seen, you have already cataloged Stiles’s tattoos- Scott’s double band around his wrists, an ironic fox on his inner forearm- but there on the flat of his right hip is a small, elegant triskelion etched in black on his skin. 

“I wanted a reminder of where we came from,” he says. 

You must be silent for a long while because he then says, “Derek,” quiet and tentative.

You cannot, you cannot talk yet. You take his hand and lift it to your cheek so he can feel the wetness there, and you pull him in close. He caresses your face, traces his finger over your lips and kisses you, gentle, until you open your mouth under his and then you are both hungry. 

You want to turn over, you want to anchor his body with your own, but even now you can smell his exhaustion, so you kiss his shoulder and his temple and you let him settle, his arm strewn over your chest. 

“I’m so tired, Der,” he slurs. 

“I know,” you say, “I know.” 

In the morning, your bodies lit with the early spring sun, you press him down against the mattress and you finally get your mouth where you want it. You swirl your tongue over the swoops of his tattoo and then move lower still. His hands clench in your hair, his toes curl against your back. Your name on his lips-he’s calling you back to life- is nothing but a gasp.

“Come home,” he says, after. “Come home.” 

 

You spend most of the graduation ceremony sitting with Sarah’s girlfriend and mom. Marni takes one look at you and though you’ve never met, pulls you in for a hug. 

“You’re Laura’s brother, right?” she says.

“Yes.” 

“You look just like her.” You don’t. 

“I wish she were here instead of me,” you tell Sarah after the ceremony. It is your life’s truth. “She’d be very proud of you.” 

Sarah tightens her arms around you. “I just wish she were here.” 

You hear someone calling your name. Stiles is nowhere to be seen, but Kira, Scott, Lydia and the Sheriff are standing in an awkward huddle across the grass. Kira is waving at you.

“Excuse me,” you tell Sarah, and you make your way through the crowd towards them. 

“Scott thought of you as an older brother, and he’s got abandonment issues,” Stiles had said as you packed, clearing out before the Sheriff and Scott got there-so maybe he did know about the letter. “He’ll thaw,” he’d said, and you kissed him, but made no promises. 

Scott looks nowhere near thawing. Even if you couldn’t smell the tension coming off him as you near, you would be able to see it in his rigid back, the tilt of his chin. 

Kira barrels into you. “Derek!” she cries. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

You laugh. “Yeah, well I didn’t know you were going to be here either. Laura’s friend Sarah graduated today. She asked me to come. I didn’t know Stiles was here,” you tell Kira, but you keep your eyes on Scott. “It was a nice surprise.” 

The Sheriff shakes your hand. “It’s real nice to see you, son,” he says. 

“You, too. Congratulations. You must be awfully proud of him.” 

“I am. He worked very hard to get here.” 

You know. You’ve seen. “I’m sure he did,” you say, and then you spend a few uneasy moments making small talk, until Sarah texts that they are leaving for dinner, and you take your leave. The Sheriff shakes your hand again, Lydia kisses your cheek, Kira waves, and Scott says nothing at all. 

Just as you reach Sarah, you hear the Sheriff calling you. You turn to see him hurrying towards you. 

“Derek,” he says. “I know, Stiles told me that you’re cooking in New York now. That sounds like a fine thing to do. But I just wanted to let you know, that if you ever wanted a career change, or if you want to come home, there’s always a place for you at the station. We could use someone like you on the force now that Parrish has moved on. We’ll work out whatever needs working out.” 

He’ll thaw.

“Thank you, sir,” you say, and you want to say more, but Sarah makes an impatient noise behind you. “I’ve got to get going, but thank you. I’ll take that under advisement.” 

Those Stilinskis never do let you go. 

 

It’s not a huge surprise when Gabby decides to close Apple & Thistle. Restaurants bleed money, and you’ve seen Gabby frowning over the accounts in her office of late. You consider bailing her out. You have the money, and Gabby’s one of the best. It wouldn’t necessarily be the worst investment you could make. But you find that you don’t want to. Ever since Ann Arbor, your skin’s been too small for your body. There’s somewhere else you need to be.

 

Beacon Hills has changed, but it still feels the same. You shift and run the Preserve- pine and fir and oak. The scent of your family is not here, but it is here, you are here. Laura, straight and tall beside you, Jaimie, solemn behind. Wild-haired Cora, high on your father’s shoulders. Your mother, just a figure, just a shadow, up ahead. The man Peter once was. Boyd, Erica. All your ghosts are with you. You run.

The wind changes. You double back, and easy as thinking, your paws shift to feet, your claws to hands.

The Alpha of Beacon Hills stands in the clearing with his friend, just as it was in the beginning. 

Stiles reaches out and threads his fingers through yours. 

“Derek,” Scott says, and he holds out his hand.


End file.
